“Sujets à Vifs” created with Pauline Peyrade
Together, we embarked on this unconventional adventure and created a short, performative piece, performed at the Jardin de la Vierge at the Lycée Saint-Joseph. “Surrendering to addiction and breaking free from it. Seizing the moment when the foot breaks, when the head disconnects. To explore the void. To experience it. To strip it bare. To dare to manipulate. To veil the Virgin. To scream. To dance. To sing. To clench your fists. To bare your teeth. To go through the night. The pain. Hope. Fighting. Exhausting oneself. Collapsing. Destroying. Tearing. Smashing. Trampling. Laughing. Scratching. Biting. Swallowing everything. Digesting everything. Until there is nothing left. Nothing but the earth that carries us and the air that keeps us alive.”
Conception: Justine Berthillot and Pauline Peyrade
Text: Pauline Peyrade
Choreography: Justine Berthillot
Sound: Antoine Herniotte
Artistic collaboration: Mathieu Bertholet
Production: Le Monfort Théâtre
Coproduction: SACD – Festival d’Avignon
“A tension gradually emerges — a closure of love that one refuses to accept, with the obsessive language of passion, repeating the same words, the same codes like magic formulas, gripped by the anxiety of love as deciphered by Barthes in *A Lover’s Discourse*. And the acrobatics and physical feats of Justine Berthillot express the often spectacular danger of this pursuit of lost love, the suffering of an abandoned body, ready to be pierced on a bed of nails, crawling and agonizing towards the other, whom one wants to absorb, to merge with, to invite inside, to become one and the same.”
“The world on stage is initially very funny, marked by the presence of an inflatable pool and a very instrumental version of *La Vie en Rose*. The text and the movement align perfectly in a frantic urgency to speak and to act — typical of those who can’t escape the wolf’s jaws.”
“Justine Berthillot’s acrobatics and physical feats express the sometimes spectacular danger of pursuing lost love, the suffering of an abandoned body, ready to be pierced on a bed of nails, crawling and agonizing toward the other, whom one wishes to absorb, to fuse with, to invite inside, to become, to form a single being.”
